ArtRx NYC
This week NYC offers lots of opportunities to travel without going very far.
This week NYC offers lots of opportunities to travel without going very far: visit the days of early medical photography with an event at the New York Academy of Medicine, or the 1980s with a pioneering hip-hop film, or the 1990s with a tribute to a sex-positive queer nightclub, or India via the Queens Museum. Just don’t go stray too far, because Brooklyn has two summery pop-up events lined up for you too: a small press flea and a flower-themed art show.
Abstraction & Figuration: Strange Bedfellows?
When: Wednesday, July 29, 6:30–8pm (free with RSVP)
Where: National Academy Museum & School (1083 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan)
Ah, the old dichotomy: abstraction and figuration. But are they really opposites anymore? Were they ever? Join artists Donna Dennis, Roberto Juarez, Philip Pearlstein, and Dorothea Rockburne — all of whom have work on view in the National Academy Museum’s current exhibition — for a discussion of their own practices in relation to this “ever-evolving dichotomy.” The conversation will be moderated by Maura Reilly, newly appointed chief curator of the National Academy Museum and a contributor to Hyperallergic.
Back to Clit Club
When: Thursday, July 30, 6pm–11pm ($10 suggested)
Where: Participant Inc. (253 East Houston Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan)
By way of paying homage to New York’s Clit Club — the itinerant sex-positive queer nightclub and community founded in 1990 by Julie Tolentino and Jocelyn Taylor that ran until 2002 — curators Vivian Crockett and Leeroy Kun Young Kang have brought together a one-night program of ephemera, discussions, and screenings. To help you truly get in touch with those Clit Club days, the event will be immediately followed by an afterparty and a set by DJ Ramdasha. —Benjamin Sutton
Passport Thursdays: India
When: Thursday, July 30, 7–10pm
Where: Queens Museum (New York City Building, Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Queens)
The Queens Museum’s Passport Thursdays are designed to showcase the borough’s diversity while focusing on one cultural tradition for audiences eager to experience something new. This year’s featured countries or regions are the Caribbean, Taiwan, Colombia, Korea, South Africa, and this week, India. For those interested in seeing classical Indian dance, the Parul Shah Dance Company, which is headed by an internationally acclaimed Kathak dancer and choreographer, will be performing, and the 2014 film Haider, a modern-day adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet set amid the Kashmir conflicts of 1995, will also be screened. —Hrag Vartanian
Medical Photography
When: Thursday, July 30, 6:30–7:45pm ($30)
Where: New York Academy of Medicine (1216 Fifth Avenue, East Harlem, Manhattan)
The advent of photography represented an essential new way of sharing medical information, and this Thursday’s event hosted by Atlas Obscura at the New York Academy of Medicine’s Rare Book Room invites attendees to view some of those early resources. While there will likely be some shocking visuals, from hand-colored dermatological atlases to portraits of the wounded from the Civil War, there’s also a groundbreaking history of treatment and photography processes in these 19th- and 20th-century medical photography archives. —Allison Meier
Wild Style Reunion
When: Thursday, July 30, 7pm (free with museum admission)
Where: Brooklyn Museum (200 Eastern Parkway, Prospect Heights, Brooklyn)
The Brooklyn Museum is hosting a free screening of Wild Style (1983) — widely considered the first-ever hip-hop film — followed by a talk with its director, Charlie Ahearn. As with Ahearn’s first feature, The Deadly Art of Survival (1979), the film’s loose plot is used to spotlight the talents of the various artists, musicians, and breakdancers who are featured, including Lee Quiñones, Lady Pink (Sandra Fabara), Fab 5 Freddy (Fred Brathwaite), and Grandmaster Flash (Joseph Saddler). Patti Astor, who co-founded the enormously influential FUN Gallery (1981–85), plays a journalist following the exploits of a graffiti artist named Zoro (portrayed by Quiñones). A must-see for anyone interested in the formative years of hip-hop and the 1980s art scene. —Tiernan Morgan
Printed Matter’s Moving Sale
When: Ends Friday, July 31
Where: Printed Matter (195 Tenth Avenue, Chelsea, Manhattan)
To ease its move this fall into a larger space at 231 Eleventh Ave, Printed Matter has been hosting a huge sale throughout the months of June and July, and this week’s your last to sift through the piles and get your hands on some discounted art-related literature and more. Most items are available at 10–40% off, so great deals abound on everything from signed prints to tiny zines to exhibition catalogues to tote bags. If you can’t make it to the physical store, scope out select titles online. —Claire Voon
Small Press Flea
When: Saturday, August 1, 10am–4pm
Where: Brooklyn Public Army (10 Grand Army Plaza, Prospect Heights, Brooklyn)
This Saturday, 31 small presses, many of them Brooklyn-based, will gather on the steps of the Brooklyn Public Library, “rain or shine. Unless it’s an absurd amount of rain.” Hosted by BOMB, the event will include literary journals like A Public Space, fiction-focused magazines like One Story, works-in-translation publisher Archipelago Books, and visual arts websites like Triple Canopy. If you’re a poetry lover, Ugly Duckling Presse will also be on hand, with its most recent 6×6 issue, a small paperbound biannual compilation of six poems by six poets. And, around now for almost 80 years, New Directions, home to the work of William Carlos Williams and Muriel Spark, is always worth a browse. —Elisa Wouk Almino
The Perennial
When: Sunday, August 2, 3–6pm
Where: The Grecian Shelter (Prospect Park, Brooklyn)
Organized by More Art, this single-afternoon exhibition puts a contemporary spin on floriography, or “the language of flowers … a form of communication that was popular in Victorian times.” Twelve artists have created mixed-media works featuring embedded messages based on the old Victorian flower code, and a “limited-edition floral dictionary” will be on hand to help you decipher them. Taking place in Prospect Park, the vibe should be flower fair crossed with pop-up art exhibition — a perfect outing for a summer day.
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With contributions by Elisa Wouk Almino, Allison Meier, Tiernan Morgan, Benjamin Sutton, Hrag Vartanian, and Claire Voon
